Wow

I haven't written anything here in a while. I guess that's because I don't have 21st century challenge anymore, but I don't see why that means I have to stop writing into the void.

So what's been going on with me? Well, I've been writing a lot and watching a lot of football. That's pretty much all. I've discovered recently that pro football can be almost as much fun to watch as college football is, at least to me, and this is very exciting. It means I get to watch football all weekend, now, and on Monday night to boot.

But I was raised an Alabama fan, and I don't think I'll ever grow out of that. I'll always love the Crimson Tide, no matter where I live. But it's nice to watch other games, too. Before this season I would never have watched a football game other than Alabama, but now I can't seem to control myself. And with this last weeks games, who can blame me? I mean, Washington, who went 0-12 last season, beat #3 ranked USC and booted them from the top five with a last second field goal. Meanwhile the Tide moves up to the number 3 spot and gets ready to face it's first SEC foe, Arkansas, who looked good but lost to #23 Georgia on Saturday night. Oregon beat Utah, who crushed Alabama in the bowl where they met at the end of last year, and #1 Florida kept Tennessee from singing "Rocky Top" after all, though they didn't crush them as badly as some might have thought. And Virginia Tech, which Alabama struggled with in the season opener came back from behind with some very impressive plays in the last 2 minutes. Overall this week has been very exciting, as even more games than these became close till the last minutes.

Meanwhile, in the pro football universe, the Jets and the Giants both won, so New York and George R. R. Martin are happy. The Steelers lost but the Colts beat out Miami in the last five minutes, having possession of the ball for less than fifteen minutes through the whole game. I'm liking the Manning Brothers a lot, as usual, and I'm glad the Jets with their rookie quarterback were able to beat the Patriots, who I hate.

I'm feeling good about Alabama's chances, too. We have a good group of returning players as well as some new names which are attracting attention, like Richardson and McElroy. We're 3-0, now, but that could change any time. I'll try to maintain my composure til next week.

Oh, and about my writing--I've started something new, something I hope will be good. Well, actually my focus these days is just on finishing the thing, rather than it being good, but we'll see. I'll let you know how it turns out, as well as update you on what it's actually about in another post.

A Slightly Off-Topic Post...

So my good friend Clay and I have started an internet Literary Magazine which is, at this point, still in the creation process, but I would love for more people to get involved. It's called Scarlet Words, and though it is technically for a class assignment, we have high hopes for its future beyond that. So if you're interested shoot me an email. If you have facebook there is a group there for it, and we'd love to have people submit their fiction and poetry. I know this has nothing to do with the 21st century... or does it? It actually ties directly into my final project idea--the changing ways of the publishing industry. Now I won't say that we are part of the publishing industry here (yet), but you see this sort of thing more and more lately. People get published online nowadays instead of in books. This is not a universal truth, but if you had asked someone what an internet literary magazine was ten years ago they woulda called you crazy. I would have, but I was seven. Anyway, come on and get involved! By the way, my partner in crime would kill me if I didn't use the word luminaries in here somewhere... so... be a luminary and submit...? I tried.

Pirates!

So I have always had a fascination with pirates, but recently there have been a bunch of them giving my lifelong love a bad name. I mean, seriously, I thought all pirates were supposed to be the romanticized version, the gritty, good guys that act like bad guys kinda thing. But now there are pirates keeping people hostage and taking cruise ships and they aren't making it fun or disney-ish at all. Needless to say I'm upset. Now I know this is really no joking matter, people have died and it's bad and everything, but what ever happened to the days when pirates, who were, in their time, terrifying, were light hearted and joyous?

This post is mostly a joke, but I think there's a point in here somewhere. Pirates were never lighthearted and joyous, so why did we start to think of them like that? When did pirates stop being scary and start being awesome? This is a serious question. As Americans I think we like to take things that are tough and scary and idealize them. We value strength and, though I don't think we like to admit it, villainy, in a way. When did that start? Hmm?

But pirates are still awesome.

Final Project

So from the very start of this class I've been interested in the change in the publishing industry that is taking place all around us. I'm worried about what it will mean for writers like me. If I ever publish a book, will I not be able to hold it in my hands? sign it for people at some mall in New Jersey? It seems weird, I know, but I'm actually worried about these things. Even from a readers perspective, I'm interested. Will I have to curl up with a laptop or, at best, a Kindal if I want to read? I don't know if I can handle that, honestly. I want to have a dog eared copy of my favorite book. And I want to have another, perfect copy of that same book. I may be a weird person but America is full of weird people, and I don't think I'm the only person that feels this way. Now a whole nother problem to get into is publishing itself, and how hard it will be to get published in the future. Will the advancement of technology make it nearly impossible to get published? Will it make it so easy that everyone can get published? Will anyone care? Or maybe it will stay exactly the same, just in a new medium. Regardless of what happens in the future, this is a subject I am very interested in. I want to expand upon it and do some research. The SciFi writer Michael A. Stackpole has a podcast on the subject called the Secrets, about publishing industry and the best tips and tools to use in order to get new writers published. It's quite a good podcast, even if he rarely if ever updates, and he talks about these problems a lot. It is really what got me interested in all this in the first place.

Medicare Scare!

So this is a post in response to our work with the Bill family. And yes, the scare I'm referring to was actually not about medicare but rather social security, but hey, I'm not gonna pass up on a rhyming title. But anyway the point is that I was genuinely worried about the country I live in for a few hours when our research (falsely) uncovered the information that social security stops at 85. I dunno about you, but I plan on living a lot longer than that. The reasoning behind this was that the calculator on the website stopped at a certain birth date--you apparently cannot apply for social security if you are over 85. This is less terrifying than it simply cutting of at that age, though. This only means that if you haven't already registered then you can't anymore, but if you're 85 and you don't already have social security, then chances are you're already dead. I also want to address the fear of social security not being around anymore when I get to be that ripe old age. First of all let me say that I'm not usually this forward looking, and it's making me feel kinda weird. But the information I heard last week about social security put some of my worries to rest. It also made entirely new ones, though, but you can't win everything. I'm glad that social security will still exist when I need it, but I'm worried now that our country is way too far in debt to know what to do with itself. I keep wondering to myself if there's anything I can do to help, but of course there isn't, other than paying my taxes and being an upstanding citizen. The amount of money that is being lost and gained and moved around and made up is beyond my comprehension. I can hardly imagine having ten thousand dollars, not to mention ten billion. So I think I'm a little out of my league here. I'm still kinda worried about all of it, but I'm also worried about final exams, which are closer at hand. I'm worried about what college I go to, what job I'll get. Social security can wait.

Shopping for a New Computer

So I've started saving up for a new comupter, which I plan to purchase over the summer. And as I begin shopping, I begin thinking about the state of technology today, and how far it has come since yesterday. I mean, I remember well the days of dial-up internet and how amazing it was. I spent hours on the computer then, but maybe that's just because you had to if you wanted to get anything done. But hey, I spend hours on the computer now, just a few years later, and now I've got cable internet, exponentially faster than that old dial-up stuff, and still I get frustrated with my computer because it's not "good enough." This makes me wonder, where will we stop? Will we keep advancing the technology? How much farthur can we possibly go? And what will all this mean for our daily lives? It's pretty crazy, when you start to think about it. I mean I can't even wrap my mind around it.

But when I went shopping, I saw a lot of numbers. Not mentioning the big number, which was the price, there were numbers for memory and RAM and all this stuff and suddenly I'm not so sure how computers work anymore. If you had asked me a few days ago if I was good with computers I probably would have said yes. Now I'm not so sure. I'm nervous going into this because I'm not sure what to look for, and I'm not sure what's good as far as these numbers are concerned. This problem is easily fixed, though. I can just bring one of my friends with me, someone who is a lot more tech savy than I am. But still, this whole thing is intimidating. It's exciting at the same time, though, because I'm ready to have that laptop. I guess we'll see how it turns out. I'll keep you posted (is that a pun? I think it is. I mean, I'm laughing.)

Jeffco, Water and Hard Times

To me, this is pretty simple. You shouldn't want to increase the amount of money that your county owes when your county already owes more than it should. It's quite simple, really, but it's the same thing as telling someone to stop smoking or anything like that. Honestly I have no clue about the SWMA, apart from what I read in the article, and that alone doesn't give me enough information to understand the moves that the county is making. Just as I have never smoked, and therefor don't know how hard it is to quit, I cannot form an informed opinion or give any advice (not that anyone would listen to it, obviously) without doing more research. But despite this quite large handicap, I can still say that if you are already crippled, I'm not sure why you would want to chop off a functional limb.

By the way, this is all in reference to Jefferson County retreating from the SWMA, or the Storm Water Management Authority, and the costs that that retreat will cause. It is a risk that we needn't take, and one that is ill advised. But like I said, I don't really know what I'm talking about, right?

A Lighter Note...

It seems most of my blog entries are kinda sad... After reading these you may think my outlook is grim, and I guess it is, but the thing about me is that I'm not really too worried about the future. Every now and then I get excited about it and start getting mad at myself and at the world, but I'm not really that hyped up about it most of the time, and even when I am, I'm not really angry, more... tense. I'm secretly worried about it, somewhere deep in my soul. By it I mean everything, the future, the 21st century challenges that we are all here to face. We're almost a decade through this new generation and I still feel mostly like I did in the nineties. I am certainly a lot happier than I appear here, and I think now is time for a post that shows that.

The 21st century is certainly not all doom and gloom. We tend to focus on that, or at least I do, but there is a lot more than all that as well. The advancement of technology will lead to changes in our society both for the better and worse, and as we realize that we are having effects on the environment we will start to change the way we create things. I am optimistic, really, and I think the future will hold good things. The fact that this class exists is reason enough for me to be excited about the future, and sure that we have finally started to care about the world.


Plus:

This is why I'm happy now.
This cat has absorbed all my sadness.

Blogging!

This, I have to admit, is more difficult than it looks. Blogging, that is. At first I thought it would be very easy to blog once a week, but as I mark the weeks off my calendar (metaphorically--I don't actually keep a calendar, either) I realize it's a lot more difficult. I don't think it's because I don't have any ideas that I want to get out there. I have plenty of ideas. I think it may be because it feels kindof futile, like blowing into a tornado or trying to get the water out of a cruise ship with a thimble. Are my ideas actually being read? listened to? Somehow I doubt it. But, I persist (sort of). Wish me luck in future attempts.

DNA, RNA, IDK

Excuse the use of internet lingo above, but I think it had to be done. I am a person who accepts science, enjoys its existence greatly and respects it's power. I am not, however, a scientist. Still, I have to admit that working with plants and figuring out whether or not they are genetically modified was extraordinarily fun. I'm not saying that I have a career of doing this sort of thing in my future, but I think these types of labs and experiments are things that everyone should try at some point in their life.

It certainly opens my eyes to some stuff... stuff that I really already knew, but never really thought about. Like how corn is genetically modified most of the time, and how most of what we eat and drink has corn in it. It isn't exactly a bad thing either, as some people might think, but it certainly is a thing, and it's a thing that should be thought about.

Water, Water, Water.

So I assume that most people already understand how important water is to everyday life. I have heard this for as long as I've been able to recognize words, and I think everyone else has, as well. I'm not going to ramble on about how important water is, because we know this already. What I'm going to ramble on about (because I have to ramble on about something) is doing something about it. That seems to be what I say about a lot of things, I think. Whether it is with water or recycling or really just about anything, my opinion always lies with the flaws of humanity and how we are able to see this problem, and yet we are not able to do anything about it. It's because people are comfortable, now, and there is nothing more dangerous in the world that roughly 6 billion comfortable people. We are so hesitant to give up our free running water (and yes, I know that not all 6 billion of those people are comfortable, but bare with me) and our lights and power and everything. As standard of living rises, so does the cost of maintaining it, and it is a cost that is far more important than money.

As far as importance goes, I think there is nothing more important. Everything stems from here, in a way. We cool our factories with water, our power plants. We maintain life. It's the most important thing on the planet. We take it for granted, though, and some of us think it'll always be there. And you know maybe it will be there long after all of us have died, but maybe it won't. Just something to think about, I think.

Logos-Pathos-Ethos, Another Look

Yes, I'm here again, mostly just because I can't keep myself away. Honestly this is starting to grow on me as one of my favorite topics so far in this class. I cannot help, I've noticed, judging things with this mindset in place. It's just that Mr. Beitelman has given a name to the way I think. It's kinda difficult, though, to think about it in terms of Logos Pathos and Ethos. I start to think of those three magical words every time I see a commercial or a billboard now, what exactly are these things trying to get at, I wonder. I've always wondered what everyone is trying to sell me, and I think everything is trying to sell me something, whether it's an idea or a friendship or some fruit roll ups or whatever. Now I've added another question to the list.

How are they trying to sell it?

Using these two questions I can probably become the kind of person that no one really wants to be around. That's not what I'm going for, though, so I suppose I'll have to wait till I'm home alone, watching TV or looking at the computer screen, and I'll wonder just what America has turned in to. And not just America. The whole world.

This Blessed House

The short story we read in class (a long time ago, I know, I have trouble remembering to come back here) was interesting to me. It looked into the idea of religion, and what exactly that can mean as far as what people with different religions can mean to each other. In the story there is a little statuette of Jesus, and this causes some trouble for Sanjeeve, a lot more that it would to, say, a guy named Mike, who was Christian. It just goes to show you that you can never really be sure just what's going to offend someone, and, in my experience, it's probably better not to leave behind your Jesus. Really though, religion is one of those things that is always going to be touchy. It's a cut that's scabbed over and keeps ripping off, every day, thousands of times per day, and it will do that forever. Some people don't believe in God, or in any God, or in anything religious at all. And even those people get offended by stuff like this. It's a lot more powerful than you might think, at first.

Advertising and What All This Means

Talking about advertising really interests me. That may be because my mother works in advertising, but I don't think that's all of it. I think it may be simply because advertising is just really interesting in general. It's like a window into the American soul. This is true because you can tell, looking back through the years of advertising--how it was done, who was targeted--where America was as a country. All this is really interesting to me, especially when you consider it with Logos Pathos and Ethos.

I think it's funny, and also more than a little sad, in many ways, that while using Logos Pathos and Ethos as guidelines to sort of take apart these advertisements, we are basically saying that they cannot really be trying to do good. Sure they can do good, but if they don't advertise on a certain channel they're just trying to bump up their Ethos, and so on. I think that's probably because there seldom ever is a company that is actually trying to do good. Well, not quite. Everyone tries to do good, but only if the consumer can see it--It's like they're showing off for the attractive girl/boy in their class, and they're getting what they want. I think it's probably the most effective when they make you think you're doing good by buying their product. As Clint talked about with his (RED) Dell laptop. I've seen the commercials, and they don't really appeal to Logos at all, which is true for most commercials, these days, but I think that's important here. They want to make you think you're helping people by buying this product, but as Clint said, you're not really doing that much good. Whenever I hear an ad saying "For every item we sell we'll donate 10 cents to these dying people over here," I feel like these guys with money are holding these people without money hostage. They're basically saying--we have all this money, and we can give it to these people who need it, but only if you pay for this thing that you don't really need. And we'll make more money. And so on.

Obesity, How Fat is Too Fat?

I've been hearing about obesity for a long time now, it seems. About as long as I've been hearing about anything else that people have a problem with these days. We hear a lot of different takes on this one, which is sort of why I'm interested in it. You see with most big problems that we face in the 21st century, everyone mostly agrees about the problem itself, if not the solution, but with obesity it's a bit different. You see some people don't care about obesity at all. Some people might even like it. People enjoy eating; it's something that we all have to do, right? Why not make the most of it? We talk a lot of fixing this problem. Whether we should start young, with prevention, or just lose the weight once we have it, or both. I think you have to do both, because if you just start trying to lose the weight, then you're going to gain it back, and your children are going to be just as fat as you.

Codrin said something in class along the lines of "We are fat because we as humans were not meant to live such a sedentary lifestyle" and I think that's an interesting idea. Within a reasonable amount of time in the past, we as human were generally much more active than we are now. But, as standard of living increased and the amount of work we had to do to be happy decreased, something else started going up. Something too big to be sneaky, but too quick for us to have caught in time. That thing is obesity. We don’t really know what hit us, honestly. We just do what we do until one day we look down and we can’t see our toes, and oh how shocked we are! This is just one place where you can see a statistic. They all really show the same thing--We're getting fatter. Especially in our neck of the woods. What I want to know is how to inspire people to do something about it. Any ideas?

Gripped in the iron fist that is 2009...

... I find that I'm pretty much in the same place I was in a year ago, or two weeks ago. That doesn't mean that nothing has changed for me, because it has, but I swear I don't remember the last time I wasn't thinking about the future, and just how scary the whole thing is. That's why the new year scares me, a bit. It's the unknown, in it's own way. Anything could happen, really. Many of us are worried about these 21st Century Challenges, and we should be. We have to be. It seems we don't have a choice, and I don't think we ever did, but some of us are so stubborn we won't look at a thermometer and say, "Yup, it's gettin' hotter." But I'm also looking at smaller challenges, presented by this shift into the full weight of the 21st Century. I tend to care about the smaller things. To me, they aren't small. Well, some of them. I'm worried more about whether or not I'm ever going to sell a book than what I'm throwing away, or what I'm eating. And before you say anything, I know--it's terrible. I'm a bad person. But I can't help it, and I figure there's no point lying to myself. In that same vein, I can't help but point out that you have to write a book before you can sell one. You can take that same rule and apply it to these challenges that we will face in the upcoming years. Such as this: before you can fix the problem, you have to admit it's there. We're doing better with this. After all, most people are agreeing that that thermometer means it really is gettin' pretty toasty in here.

Also, and this is aimed more at me than anyone else, if you don't think about these problems, if you don't admit they exist and address them, then there's no point in thinking about that book, because you may never get the chance to write it. I guess I'm saying I'm a hypocrite. But I knew that. But you have to look at some of these problems with a mindset of, "what will make people care about this?" Such as my writing problem, and everyone's employment problem. As if it weren't enough to see that the world is crashing down around us. I can bet you that there are a lot of people in my English class who are a lot more worried about their research papers than they are about climate change right now. It's like the guy in the movies who goes in after money to a place he knows he will die, just so he can leave the world a rich man. Can he ever use that gold he got?

No. He's dead. Duh.

But he was more focused on the money than his own life. That's not universally true, but people are scared, and people are stubborn, and people don't wanna believe that this stuff is serious. You have to put it in terms they can see, they can believe in, they can understand. I'm not really sure what it all means... all this... I'm ranting, which I think maybe you're supposed to do on a blog. Who knows. What I do know--it's a scary place out there, and it's only getting scarier. It's up to us to be the ones with the swords who aren't afraid of just about anything.